


Earthly Paragons

by chess_ka



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:00:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chess_ka/pseuds/chess_ka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a lost angel adopts Cecil and Carlos - or possibly vice-versa - and no one is entirely sure what to do about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthly Paragons

The angel was there when he woke up.

Carlos blinked at it. Then he blinked again. He buried his face back into his pillow for a few moments and then lifted his head. The angel was still there. He fumbled for his glasses. They simply brought the angel into sharper focus. Carlos sighed, resigning himself to the angel’s existence (and hoping that the City Council didn’t realise he had just acknowledged this to himself).

It was watching him.

“Cecil? There’s an angel.”

The lump in the bed beside Carlos stirred, though Cecil did not emerge. Carlos prodded him. The blankets were pulled down enough that he could see the mass of dark hair and squinting eyes.

“Whu-?”

Cecil was never at his most articulate in the morning.

“There’s an angel.”

“Ugh.” Cecil pulled the blankets back over his head. “You woke me up for that? Just leave it alone.” A pause. “Or maybe offer it tea.”

“It’s  _looking_  at me.”

“Cayenne tea for me.”

Carlos sighed again. He had become highly adept at sighing in the last two years. He looked from the Cecil-shaped lump to the angel, its many eyes gazing at him with bright curiosity. Right. Well, there were worse things to find watching you in your sleep. He threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed. He retrieved a discarded t-shirt from the floor and pulled it quickly over his head. It was inside-out, but at least an honest-to-goodness angel was no longer looking at his hairy chest in fascination.

 _Angels can see anything you do,_  his  _abuela_  had told him once, pointing at him with a crooked, arthritic finger. _Remember that, chico._

This was probably not the sort of thing she’d meant.

The water from the kitchen tap ran yellow for a moment, giving off a sharp, lemony smell, before it deigned to offer water. Fingers still clumsy with sleep, Carlos filled the kettle and set it to boil and found two mugs. After a moment he set out a third. What sort of tea would an angel drink? he mused, and then wondered when that had become a fairly normal thing to consider before nine a.m. on possibly-a-Saturday.

His cell phone had been charging on the kitchen counter, so he sent off a quick text to Old Woman Josie to find out if she had lost an Erika. He didn’t recognise this particular angel as one of the four who lived with Old Woman Josie, but maybe another had moved in.

He turned back to the tea and almost dropped his phone. The angel loomed over him, close enough that he could feel the warmth from its dusky skin (presumably its skin. Carlos wasn’t sure whether angels had skin in the real sense) and register its scent, like dirt-after-rain and oregano. It tilted its head as it regarded Carlos, and then held something out to him. One of the tins of tea. Carlos took it in shaking hands.

“Paprika?” he said weakly, clutching the tin to his chest. The angel’s eyes – all five of them – were galaxies, an infinity of stars and space. Carlos turned his gaze away, blinking rapidly. The after-image of its gaze was burnt into the back of his eyelids. “Tea. Right. Yes.”

The angel watched Carlos prepare the tea, its beautiful, terrifying eyes following as he brewed and poured – paprika tea for the angel, cayenne for Cecil, peppermint for himself, as he had not yet got the taste for Night Valian tea flavours – and then gently took its mug from Carlos. Its fingers brushed his in the exchange, and Carlos felt it in a prickling pleasure-pain beneath his skin, like tiny, fiery needles.

The sound of the kitchen door opening made him jump. Cecil gave him a look of fond concern, fingers dragging through his springy hair. It appeared to have grown another inch overnight and his pyjama pants were a truly alarming shade of orange. Carlos tried not to look at them.

“The pink thing in the bathroom has turned into a frog,” Cecil said by way of greeting, crossing the room to press a kiss to Carlos' cheek. Carlos’ stomach flipped at the contact. Eight months together and simple gestures of affection still sent the blood rushing to his face. He was still not entirely used to Cecil staying over.

“Right. A – living frog?”

“Of course. At least, it croaks. I put it in the sink in some water.”

Cecil’s ability to identify animals was oddly limited. Carlos still wasn’t entirely sure how he had come to the conclusion that Koshekh was a cat. Cats did not, in his experience, have scales. Or screeches that turned your knees to water. At least Cecil's dog, Abaddon, was an actual dog, albeit one with a missing front leg and a tendency to become invisible on the first Thursday of the month.

“I’ll look in a bit,” he said, wondering whether he was going to find a velociraptor in the bathroom sink. “Er, I text Josie and asked about…” He gestured vaguely at the angel, who was sipping quite contentedly from its polka dotted mug. Carlos wasn’t sure how, as it– she? He? Did angels have genders? Or accepted pronouns?- didn’t appear to have a mouth.

“A very good idea, my clever Carlos.” Cecil kissed Carlos briefly on the lips as he picked up his own tea. “It should stay here until then. It’s hardly causing any trouble – and anyway, angels don’t exist.” These last words were said in a much louder tone, and directed towards the garbage disposal.

Angel aside, their morning proceeded much as it usually would. Cecil made breakfast - bacon and poached snake egg with (gluten-free) toast and papaya vanilla jam – and chattered happily to Carlos about the latest upset at the PTA and the Glow Cloud's desire to completely overhaul the curriculum. Apparently it felt that astronomy lessons were invasive and should be replaced with one hour a week of total sensory deprivation, so that students would learn the true value of their senses. Carlos nodded and made small noises whenever Cecil paused for breath and passed toast crusts to Abaddon, who had learned early on that lying underneath Carlos' chair would bring him dividends. Beneath the table their bare feet tangled together comfortably.

The angel didn't do anything. It seemed quite content to linger by the kitchen table with its polka dotted mug, though it watched Cecil and Carlos with the same benign interest. It seemed especially intrigued by the jam; it tilted its head whenever Cecil spread a liberal coating of it across his toast (and then licked the knife, making Carlos wince). It made little abortive movements with its free hand towards the table.

“Oh, would you like some? Here.” Cecil tore his slice of toast and handed half to the angel, who took it delicately. Carlos watched closely, hoping to identify where on earth the angel kept its mouth. It turned the toast this way and that, then held it up to one bottomless eye as thought studying it. Carlos blinked, and the toast was gone. The angel's skin gave a faint glow and it hummed, the frequency making Carlos' ears ring.

“Was that a … good reaction?” he asked, unsure if he was questioning Cecil or the angel.

“I don't know,” Cecil said, unconcerned. “Non-existent angels can't eat toast, Carlos.” He paused. “Though there is another jar of jam in the top left cupboard, if it would like any more.”

The angel was now dipping one long, elegant finger into the open jar. Carlos made a mental note to buy more jam.

*

The third lot of litmus paper burnt to a cinder on contact with the strange liquid Carlos had managed to extract from a very stubborn piece of lichen found growing at the edge of the Whispering Forest. He cursed to himself as ash crumbled to the benchtop. In the tank behind him the lichen made a small noise that almost sounded like a snigger.

Carlos ignored it. He wasn't going to be laughed at by a smug fungus.

His phone vibrated on the bench beside him. He pulled off his heavy protective gloves then pulled up the message from Old Woman Josie.

_Not 1 of mine dear bring them over 4 tea later ps bring cecil I hav a recipe 4 him._

Not for the first time Carlos wondered how an elderly woman had a better grasp of text speak than he did. He sent her a reply, telling her he would come over after Cecil's morning show, and then text Cecil letting him know and imploring him – again – not to mention the angel on air. The Secret Police probably knew already of course, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea for Cecil to spill it over the airwaves. He wouldn't  _mean_  to, of course, he just had a peculiar lack of filter for someone who had survived in Night Vale for so long.

“So you're not from Josie?” Carlos said, pushing his goggles up into his hair and turning around on his stool. The angel was by the fish tank, which contained several luminescent fish and a humming shrimp that had fallen to the dry desert in the last rainfall. Carlos had run outside with buckets in order to rescue as many of the flopping, gasping creatures as he could. The angel had been watching the fish for the better part of an hour, one long finger tracing their path in the air before it. When Carlos spoke it turned its gaze on him. Carlos looked fixedly at a spot slightly to the left of it, so he wouldn't have to look at its eyes.

“You're not from Josie,” he repeated. “You're not one of her angels.”

The angel cocked its head and somehow contrived to look questioning.

“Well, we'll go and see her later,” Carlos told it. “There are other angels there, you can meet them. They might help you get, uh, where you want to go.” Clearly it was lost, somehow. Why else would it show up randomly in Carlos' apartment?

The angel regarded him for a moment more, inclined its head, and then turned back to the fish. It rested one long hand on the glass side of the tank. The water, which Carlos had been planning to change, was suddenly crystal clear, and the fishes’ colours somehow even brighter than ever, blood-red and topaz and spring-green and sunset. One of them performed what could only be described as a back flip.

“Uh. Thanks.”

The angel made another pleased humming noise, of a lower frequency this time. It sent a shiver down Carlos’ spine.

In the other tank, the lichen made a soft sound of wonder.


End file.
